Note: I've added a second writeup on 1911 magazines. It can be reached via this direct link or by visiting the articles index. We now return you to your regularly scheduled website viewing.

Introduction

I recently got the opportunity to look at a selection of 1911
magazines. Alas, my good fortune came at another's expense: A friend
of mine noticed a burr developing in the slidelock notch of his
Para-Ordnance SSP along with some wear along the front side of the
slide's slidestop cutaway after less than a thousand rounds. My
friend returned the gun to Para-Ordnance for service, only to have it
sent back with the burrs lightly dressed and a note saying that his
warranty did not cover "normal wear," but they would not charge return
shipping "in the interests of customer service." This is definitely not
the behavior of a correctly-functioning 1911, but since help was
clearly not going to come from Para-Ordnance, my opinion was
requested. (Clearly an act of desparation.)

Houston, we have a problem.

After seeing the above photos, I opined that either his slide stop had
a really sharp front edge to it and/or one of his magazines' followers
was getting far too frisky with the slidelock's inner lug, forcing it
up hard while the slide was still on its way back. Logic dictates
that if all it takes to mangle is an overzealous follower, we'd see a
lot more of these kinds of problems; maybe the heat-treating in this partcular
slide is sub-par. Once you open the door to soft metal, though, it
raises the possibility that any or all of the followers could play a
part in the mangling process. There's also the chance that the
slidelock could be getting bumped by a bullet on its way up enough to
raise a ding, but not enough to induce premature slidelock;
alternately, a thumbs-high hold hitting the slidelock could provide a
similar bump from the outside. The only problems with these scenarios
is that the burr's location looks pretty consistent and random bumps
would have to happen with fairly high frequency to account for a ding
like that. Of course, the follower theory would have less than 140
occurrences of aggressive follower rise resulting in a chewed up slide.

After hemming and hawing in this fashion for several minutes, I
concluded that I couldn't say for sure without seeing the magazines.
What was supposed to be a hypothetical became all too real: I got
sent the mags, despite my protests that I couldn't guarantee a
conclusive answer, a coherent analysis, or even the minimal level of
competence required to avoid drooling on his magazines.

Truth be told, I was happy to be able to play with this wide a variety
of mags. I've always been a staunch 1911 magazine traditionalist,
which has limited my experience with the more varied examples of 1911
mags. My reasons for sticking with what many consider old-fashioned
designs are good ones and I'll enumerate them later, but it would be
worth the time to become familiar with other makes; maybe I'd even get
lucky and have my assumptions proven wrong.

I love science.

So it was with great excitement and a dramatic photograph that I
assembled the loaner magazines, a selection of mags from my own
collection, and my trusty Mil-Spec to answer the following question:
Is it possible that a magazine's follower is contributing to the slide
peening, and what difference do all these different magazine designs make?